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Washington • Democrats want to tie the passage of three new trade agreements with more federal help for workers who see their jobs shipped overseas.
But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is standing in the way, saying the extra benefits are too expensive and unrelated to trade agreements negotiated with Panama, Colombia and South Korea.
"We're broke," Hatch said Thursday. "With a $7 billion price tag, this just doesn't make sense."
The Senate Finance Committee, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., has held two hearings on the long-stalled trade agreements this week, where Baucus forcefully called for increased funding for what is known as the "trade adjustment assistance" (TAA) program in conjunction with the free trade agreements.
"We are doing them all together or we are not doing any of them at all," Baucus said. "TAA retrains American workers who have lost jobs due to trade because imports have increased or factories have moved oversees."
But Hatch says this line of reasoning, supported by President Barack Obama, is inconsistent, arguing the trade agreements create jobs, and shouldn't be linked to an "unrelated spending program" that helps laid-off employees.
"The White House can't have it both ways," he said. "Every day we delay puts American companies, farmers and workers at an unfair disadvantage against our foreign competitors."
Senators cannot act on the agreements until the president sends them to the Senate for approval, and the White House is using that leverage to pressure the GOP to support the trade assistance program at the higher level Congress approved in the economic stimulus bill of 2009. That expansion expired in February, and the full trade assistance program, which includes job training and extended unemployment, will phase out at the end of the year without further action.
Hatch is no fan of the program in general, calling it unfair to provide extra benefits depending on how people lose their jobs.
"Why does the worker who loses his job because his factory relocated overseas deserve more government benefits than the guy who loses his job because his factory burns down?" he asked.
But Gov. Gary Herbert and nearly two dozen other governors signed a letter to congressional leaders and the president this week that called for passage of the trade agreement and expressed support for TAA, though it doesn't say at what funding level.
Herbert told The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday that he signed the letter because he sees opportunities to improve Utah's economy by further trade in Panama, Colombia and South Korea, and he knows little about the TAA.
He has not talked to Hatch about the senator's concerns but plans to do so soon. Still, his initial reaction is to support the retraining program. He said providing displaced workers with "new education and new training and opportunities to remarket themselves with new skills in an ever-changing marketplace makes sense."
The letter is also signed by leading Republicans such as Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana.